Assume the Perpendicular

Lately I’ve been feeling really guilty about being a stay at home mom. My husband works so hard and he never gets a break, while I laze around the house, play on the floor, hang out with friends, and read books while our daughter takes her three hour nap every afternoon. 

When we started talking about having children and me staying home with them, I sort of assumed it would feel like more work, or that at least it would seem like we were doing equal tasks, but it really doesn’t. He definitely has it much harder. Of course Eleanor’s demands are almost constant, but my life has zero stress. None. His life seems full of nothing but stress.

He wakes up at 5:00am while Eleanor and I stay in bed until 7:30 or 8:00. He commutes an hour and a half and gets to work early before we are usually even awake. He works all day at job with lots of demands where he is always playing catch-up and spread too thin, while I sing “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and go for long walks. He leaves the office at 5:00pm, around the time that Eleanor is usually waking up from her super long afternoon nap which has given me plenty of time to catch up on blogs, read, watch shows, and just plain old relax. Then when he comes home after another hour and a half commute in the other direction, I hand him off the baby so I can make dinner. After that he usually has the choice of giving her a bath or doing the dishes, unless I need to shower and he ends up having to attempt to do the dishes while entertaining a tired baby.

Of course he loves spending time with Eleanor, but what he really deserves and what I cannot give him is time to just do nothing. Time to take a breather, time to play some video games, time to relax. He doesn’t get to rest at all until around 9:00pm when we all go to bed. I wish so badly there was more I could do for him. I wish I could sit him down on the couch with a cold beer and let him put his feet up after his hard day (I don’t even care how June Cleaver of me that sounds), but the fact of the matter is there is just too much to get done in our few evening hours. My life is so wonderful because his is so crappy. He is unhappy while I am enjoying the best time of my life. We are supposed to be equal partners, but he is taking on such a disproportionate amount of the work. I lay awake at night absolutely wracked with guilt over it. All I can do is tell him over and over again how thankful I am for what he is doing for our family, but no matter how I try to phrase my gratitude, it never seems like enough.